Senior veteran living in his van in a parking lot gets vehicle renovation thanks to concerned neighbours

An 81-year-old Canadian military veteran who had been living out of his car in the parking lot of a Squamish Walmart has had his situation upgraded by a group of concerned locals.

A series of unfortunate events befell Orville Larsen recently, leaving the senior with no choice but to sleep in the front seat of his aging two-door Saturn.

Squamish local Jeremiah White, also a military veteran, has known Larsen for years.

The two men hadn’t seen each other for a while before a chance encounter at the Walmart in January, when White learned about Larsen’s predicament.

“I was like, ‘How you doing?’ And he says, ‘Oh, you know, not so good. I’m living in my car out in the parking lot.’ I was like, that’s not acceptable. We can’t have that,” White recounted in an interview with CTV News in January.

“Everyone pictures an 81-year-old man as their grandfather and pictures their grandfather living in a car. Everybody’s had enough and said we’re not going to tolerate that. We can do better.”

White started a GoFundMe page with the goal of raising enough money to buy and renovate a van that the senior could be more comfortable living in.

Many people in Squamish live what is known as a van lifestyle in vehicles equipped with modern amenities.

In a matter of weeks, the campaign had brought in tens of thousands of dollars and offers of donations of equipment and time.

White and a group of other volunteers bought an older model van and have spent the past several months converting the empty shell of an interior into a proper home.

On Tuesday, Corey Smith, who helped with a lot of the renovations, gave Larsen a tour of the finished product.

“So, you’ve got your electric cook top here, induction heat, that’s your fridge in there,” said Smith. “It’s a pretty big project. It looks like a small little project but it takes a lot of time to build a house inside of a tiny space.”

Larsen said the kindness of the community that rallied around him means more than he can express.

“Big time. Big time,” the soft-spoken senior said. “I’ve worked hard all my life, but I’ve never had a gift like this.”

The van is equipped with solar panels, four large-capacity batteries, a sink with running water, and a heating system that connects to the fuel tank.

White said the group behind the van did everything they could to make it a self-sustaining home so Larsen can stop focusing on day-to-day survival and start thinking about thriving.

“I noticed when he was living in his vehicle his nutrition was definitely not the best because you’re living hand to mouth,” he said. “You don’t have refrigeration capacity, you don’t have the capacity to cook so it’s not a very healthy lifestyle.”

The GoFundMe raised over $48,000 and some of that money went to putting Larsen up in a hotel for the winter months and getting him some dental care, and some is being carried forward.

After the positive experience, White and Smith, who is also ex-military, have decided to see if they can help more struggling veterans get back on their feet.

“We’ve started Sustainable Veterans Society with the goal of doing both this and getting some land to enable veterans to grow food and be a little bit more self sustainable,” said White. “It was just completely overwhelming with the amount of generosity and the heart that people threw out there. The caring. It was really re-affirming on a humanity level. Everybody is in this together.”

No one is more grateful for that kindness than Larsen who plans to live in the van in the Squamish area but also take it on the occasional road trip because he likes to hunt and fish.

“Well, it’s my home now. It’s where I’m going to live for as long as I can do it,” he said.